Red Nose Day was celebrated in style at Leckford, with staff and pupils alike donning red to raise money for this fantastic cause!
The Year 8s took the lead in organising a brilliant range of events for the day, kicking off with a very popular Cake Sale in the Social Area at break. Lunch was extended, and the hall in Leckford was transformed into a carnival with a great selection of stalls and stands, including a Shooting Gallery, Pin-the-Nose, and a Hot Dog stall — all of which was accompanied by an Open Mic stand. A good number of pupils chose to sing and perform, as well as home-grown talent in the form of staff JP and James Holburn.
All would agree, however, that the highlight (perhaps not for those on the receiving end!) was the Staff Sponging. Head Mark gamely took the lead in the stocks, followed by staff including Maths teacher Frank and the English department's Jo Williams.
At the final fund-count, the grand total came to a fantastic £551.50, a sum that all the school can be very justly proud of. Well done to the Year 8 group that planned the day, and to all who gave so generously throughout!
As Oxford celebrated the turning on of the city's Christmas Lights on Friday evening, the newly-formed Leckford Place Choir gave its debut performance – in the magnificent surroundings of the Ashmolean Museum.
To a crowd of onlookers who thronged multiple levels of the Ashmolean's atrium, the choir sang a selection of carols and Christmas songs. The occasion was all the more special as it also marked the 1st birthday of the Ashmolean's new building.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, older students from the Sixth Form and International Study Centre performed in the d'Overbroeck's Dance Club on the main stage on Broad Street.
There will be another chance to see both groups in action: the Dance Club will perform at tonight's Sixth Form Winter Concert (Tuesday 30 November, 7pm at Leckford Place Hall), and the Leckford Place Choir will sing at the Leckford Place Winter Concert, the following week (Monday 13 December, 7pm at Leckford Place Hall). So please do come along!
Tuesday 29 June saw friends and family flocking to the school hall for the annual Leckford Place Summer Soiree. In what is now the Soiree’s fourth year, the audience was treated to an incredibly diverse range of items. From beginners to experienced performers, the night was an excellent chance for students to showcase their musical talents and gain valuable performing experience.
Solo items – ranging from piano, violin, recorder and drum items to vocal performances – were presented by Charlie Baskerville, Edith-Rose Scott, Hamza Khan, Lucy Arque, Gabriel O’Toole, Tal Fineman, Tim Howard, Sam Rigal, Meelie Smith, Joseph Kenyon-Gewirtz, James Lambert, Felix Clarke, Cole Thornicroft, Eve Martin, Felicity Hughes, and Clifford Carr.
Jazz Club (above) strutted their stuff with renditions of Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance’ and ‘My Funny Valentine’ by Rogers & Hart, and Vocal Group showed off their talents, following up a performance of a Latin hymn with ‘Rhythm of Life’ from the musical Sweet Charity, by Cy Coleman. The strength of Leckford young composers was also on show, with original pieces performed by Caleb Pakeman, Will Finnerty and Lydia Hassan. GCSE Music students’ composition coursework also provided incidental music before the concert.
A Year 10 band including Will Gildea, Will Finnerty and Olivia Frazer-Smith performed pieces by Muse and AC/DC, whilst the concert concluded with strains of Motorhead from Tal Fineman, Harry Bridge and Will Goodfellow.
Well done to all performers! We look forward to seeing you at the Winter Concert in December.
These were the familiar words that introduced Tuesday evening's performance of Cupid's Labyrinth at Leckford Place – an evening overflowing with musical ardour.
We were treated to a programme of solos, duets, trios and quartets that brought together songs by Purcell and Handel, operatic arias by Verdi and Mozart and extracts from the more modern operettas of Offenbach and Gilbert & Sullivan – all unified by the theme of love.
So we witnessed seduction …
… silent adoration …
… amorous competition …
… illicit liaison …
… and more. The quality of the singing was unfailingly excellent, with a talented cast of performers – from Year 7 to Sixth Form – proving themselves more than equal to some extremely demanding classical repertoire.
Towards the end of term, a thronged Leckford Place hall was treated to the jamboree of performing arts that is the Summer Soiree.
Guitar, recorder, euphonium, viola … Leckford’s instrumentalists showed off their skills – and the range of genres was similarly eclectic: from baroque to britpop, soul to showtunes. Many of the musical performances were clearly pupil-led – testament to the fertile school music scene.
And what a variety of voices! Whether it was Lydia Hassan’s captivatingly pared-down delivery of her own song, Skinny Jeans, Tal Fineman’s assured cover-versions of classic rock numbers, or Flora McGivan’s strikingly intense performance of All That Jazz, it was a pleasure to hear so many different styles and interpretations.
The whole evening was shot through with doses of comic surrealism, meanwhile, thanks to a series of year 9 performances – imaginative pieces that demonstrated the expressive possibilities of puppetry.
On Saturday, Summertown in North Oxford was alive with colour and sound – thanks to the street festival organised as part of Artweeks.
The joint d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form and Leckford Place School stand offered younger children the opportunity to contribute to a giant collaborative piece of art:
... Whilst Sixth Former Steve Litherland entertained onlookers with an impressive display of juggling.
Musical accompaniment, meanwhile, was provided by Evie Oswald, Sarah Pearson and Kathryn Poon.
Many thanks to the students and staff who gave up their time to help make the street festival such a great success – and to those friends of the College who came along to visit our stall.
Last term's performance of 1920s farce Not in Front of the Waiter – featuring students from both Leckford Place and d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form – was a great success. The following writeup appears in the Oxford Times Education Directory 2009, with this week's paper.
Students from Leckford Place School and d'Overbroeck's Sixth Form took a different approach to their winter production with the comedy operetta and tribute to Offenbach, ‘Not in Front of the Waiter.’ The audience were as much part of the production as the players and singers, as the vaulted school hall was transformed into a 1920’s cabaret club for the evening. Friends, family and guests, most of whom were elegantly attired in period dress, settled themselves at candlelit tables as the action took place around them.
This lavish production was served up in a series of delicious courses of songs of the era and the main performance. For Hors d’Oeuvres, the pearl-like voices of Pankaew Saksornchai and Chanita Seedaket got the audience’s attention as they sang about Gershwin’s treacherous ‘Lorelei,’ a provocative performance, enhanced by the young singers’ abundance of feathers and fans.
For Entrée the truly scrumptious Olivia Fraser-Smith melted hearts with her husky rendition of Iving Berlin’s classic, ‘What’ll I do?’ Even compere Will Cronk struggled to keep a dry eye as he presented, for Viandes, the marvellous Ben Pugsley, Captain of d’Overbroeck’s rugby first XV, who gave a faultless performance of Denza’s ‘Funiculi Funicula.’ Dessert drew the musical prelude to a close with the opulent Fleur Rampton, who carried the audience away on her ‘Stairway to Paradise.’
A break for dinner followed as guests were lavishly served by waitresses Louisa Goodfellow and Eva Rorsman, and then onto the Plat du Jour, ‘Not in Front of the Waiter’ ….
This comedy operetta was first performed in the 1960’s as a tribute to Jacques Offenbach. The Leckford Place School players, with the help of a large aspidistra, brought it to life fabulously. The story starts with waiter Block (Will Cronk) preparing to receive his guests in the private room of a Paris restaurant. Solange (Zanni Cohen) and Prosper (Matt Thorns) enter and take a table next to an enormous aspidistra. The audience learns that they are both married, though not to each other, and out to enjoy a clandestine meeting. Moments later, Hortense (Rosie Cohen) and Aristide (Gidon Fineman) arrive at an adjoining table. They are bent on a similar amorous escapade and are indeed the wife and husband of the first couple. It is not long before all is discovered; the young ladies humorously exaggerating astonishment then indignity and a quarrel ensues. The waiter intervenes to reveal that from a strawberry mark on the ladies' shoulders, he recognises them as the daughters he shamelessly abandoned in childhood. The four listen with incredulity, then the ladies rejoice in having each found a father, a sister and also a brother-in-law. Reconciliation abounds, and all join in a song in praise of family trees.
The five players gave their all with a performance that is worthy of any professional stage. Zanni and her Sixth-Form sister Rosie Cohen, whilst their casting of siblings in the play was fortuitous, are clearly very talented young ladies. They carried their roles with precision comic timing, faultless singing and the wild emotions that drew the appropriate gasps of awe and shock from the audience. Their respective partners brilliantly played roles above their years; Matt Thorns convincingly projecting his ulterior motive with the delectable Solange, becoming the confused husband in the face of too much information to take in at once. Sixth-Former Gidon Fineman was icily cool as the highbrow Aristide, clearly a man who just wanted a quiet life, and proved himself as an actor who could effortlessly handle slapstick along with the smooth. It is worthy of note that Gidon was the recent winner of Oxfordshire County Council's first ever Young Composer competition.
These four wonderful performances were brought together with great aplomb by Will Cronk with his hilarious rendition of Block the waiter, demonstrating his talent as a comic performer with a natural instinct for timing and delivery. Very polished, he won the audience’s sympathy as the luckless Block, a man who has paid royally for his misdemeanours, only to be rewarded by this coincidental reunion.
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